title: Assessing strategies to manage work and life balance of athletic trainers working in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I setting.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Certified athletic trainers (ATs) working at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I level experience challenges balancing their professional and personal lives. However, an understanding of the strategies ATs use to promote a balance between their professional and personal lives is lacking.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To identify the strategies ATs employed in the Division I setting use to establish a balance between their professional and personal lives.
  
  
  METHODS
  Qualitative investigation using inductive content analysis.
  
  
  METHODS
  Athletic trainers employed at Division I schools from 5 National Athletic Trainers' Association districts.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 28 (15 women, 13 men) ATs aged 35 ± 9 years volunteered for the study.
  
  
  METHODS
  Asynchronous electronic interviews with follow-up phone interviews. Data were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Peer review, member checking, and data-source triangulation were conducted to establish trustworthiness.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Three higher-order themes emerged from the analysis. The initial theme, antecedents of work-family conflict, focused on the demands of the profession, flexibility of work schedules, and staffing patterns as contributing to work-life conflict for this group of ATs. The other 2 emergent higher-order themes, professional factors and personal factors, describe the components of a balanced lifestyle. The second-order theme of constructing the professional factors included both organizational policies and individual strategies, whereas the second-order theme of personal factors was separation of work and life and a supportive personal network.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Long work hours, lack of control over work schedules, and unbalanced athlete-to-AT ratios can facilitate conflicts. However, as demonstrated by our results, several organizational and personal strategies can be helpful in creating a balanced lifestyle.
authors.affiliation: Department of Kinesiology, University of Connecticut, Storrs 06269-1110, USA. stephanie.mazerolle@uconn.edu
authors.forename: Stephanie M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Mazerolle
authors.forename: William A
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Pitney
authors.forename: Douglas J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Casa
authors.forename: Kelly D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Pagnotta
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D056352:Athletes; D002055:Burnout, Professional; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D013177:Sports; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014495:Universities; D014937:Work; D014940:Work Schedule Tolerance / Q000523:psychology*; D000078329:Workforce; D016526:Workload / Q000523:psychology*